


Letters Never Sent, or Never Received

by absinthe118



Series: Next Time [6]
Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Letters, M/M, Post-War, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-05-27 13:01:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15025148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/absinthe118/pseuds/absinthe118
Summary: Additional letters written, and mostly not sent, in the Next Time AU.





	1. Making It

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to flootzavut for asking me to write these! Working on them was a fun, cry-y experience.

 

> Dear Hawk,
> 
> I made it! Boarding the plane to San Francisco didn’t exactly inspire relief—anti-aircraft guns everywhere and we could hear them firing. I thought of Henry and did a lot of what I hadn’t done since my last confession (age 15, if I remember correctly). But the noise subsided, I held onto my lunch of gin and pork and beans, and we had a smooth landing in the good old cold, rainy USA. I’m writing to you from my study while I am supposed to be helping Louise choose a wallpaper pattern from a catalog. She told me it was important I give advice on such things—and who knows, maybe it is.
> 
> If you dropped me a line one of these days, I can’t say I would hate that. You know how civilian life can wear on someone without the occasional letter from war to cheer him up. In the meantime, here’s a book I thought you’d enjoy. I won’t spoil it all for you, but I will say the heroine has more than one job at that library!!! Take care of yourself, give Frank Burns a kick in the teeth from me and give my best to all the rest of them.
> 
> Lastly, sorry you weren’t around for a goodbye when I shoved off. Hope this hello makes up for it.
> 
> John F X McIntyre, M.D. (ex-U.S. Army)

* * *

***

 

> Dr. John F. X. McIntyre  
>  27 Campbell St.  
>  Quincy, MA
> 
> U.S.A.
> 
>  
> 
> Dear Dr. McIntyre:
> 
> It is with the utmost sorrow that we inform you of the death of Captain Benjamin F. Pierce, the intended recipient, and enclose your letter herewith. An official message has been received stating Captain Pierce was killed in action on the morning of November 30, 1951. We regret to be able to provide no more information at this time.
> 
>   
> 
> 
> With deepest sympathies,
> 
> Charlton J. Eldridge  
>  Brigadier General, Hanam HQ KOREA  
>  Commanding.

* * *

***

 

> Hawk,
> 
> You’re KIA. What am I supposed to do with that? They didn’t tell me how, just when, so of course I’m left to imagine. Since I can’t bear to imagine, I’m left to write a useless letter not a soul will ever see. Will it ease my mind at all, in any way? Guess I’ll try anything once, if you get my meaning.
> 
> So I got out and you didn’t. It’s the least fair outcome possible, and not just because you made cleaner cuts and your sutures held better than mine (what I’m saying is you were a better doctor than me—yes, surprise, I knew it all along). I couldn’t even count all the times you saved me from myself. Don’t fight that guy. Don’t take it all the way with that girl. (Or don’t make the girl, because the huge guy over there’s her boyfriend and he’ll give you a home lobotomy.) Don’t desert in the middle of the night. Don’t stake your wedding ring at poker. No more than five martinis on an empty stomach.
> 
> I wanted you with me all the time. I wasn’t too good at showing it, and I’ll never forgive myself for that. But I’ll tell you now: that place was terrifying, and when we were together for an hour, or a few minutes, the terror just stopped. Knowing you were there on your bunk, sleeping near me, was my safety net every single night. Even after we got close, closer than I ever thought possible, and crossed the line into all that physical stuff, the best part of it was just the simple fact of you in the room.
> 
> I doubt this would impress you, but I have a successful practice here in Boston and am doing well for myself. I get to golf and sit around on my patio. I get some fun in once in a while, I mean there was a secretary in my office recently, dynamite body, she threw me over when she got engaged. But the rest of the routine is drudgery to say the least and my wife is on the verge of divorcing me. You read that right. Two beautiful daughters—Kathy has shot up like a weed, she’s going to be dating soon and I hope to God she doesn’t meet anyone like her dad.
> 
> That’s crass, I know. Sorry to talk about sex all the time. Or maybe I’m not sorry. You were the only person who didn’t shy away from it, you even liked it, you weirdo. That’s another thing it’s hard to find here: people I can talk to, honestly, without shame. Are you sure you were really a New Englander like me and you weren’t switched at birth with some hot-blooded stud from Naples? I kid.
> 
> I thought of writing someone else in our unit for details. Father Mulcahy seemed like a good choice. Hell, if I sprayed the letter with cologne maybe even Margaret might climb down from her 20-foot high horse and pen me a sentence or two. But I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t suggest I’m soft, but I don’t want to get another letter informing me you’re all gone.
> 
> If you’ll excuse me, Hawkeye, I’m just going into the kitchen now to pour another highball so that I can finish up this note I’m writing to a ghost. That’s a pretty good one, isn’t it. Writing to a ghost. But I’ll tell you something, it does make me feel a little better, so thank you, your ghostness.
> 
> Dammit.
> 
> Before Korea I thought I was a certain kind of guy. I think I’ve been trying to be him since I came back, but he just doesn’t exist anymore—if he ever did. And I wonder if you’re the only one who knows that, because you alone met the guy I really am.
> 
> What I’m saying is I miss you. I’m worried the feeling will never go away.
> 
> Love,  
>  Trapper

* * *


	2. Darkest Before the Dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another unsent letter from Trapper to Hawkeye, further down the road (see previous chapter for background).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to flootzavut for the invite into her Next Time 'verse!

> Dear Hawk,
> 
> Trying this again since it soothed me a little the last time. Unlike that letter, though, I don’t have to light this one with my cigar tip afterward to destroy the evidence. Why, you ask? Get out of here, I don’t talk to ghosts.
> 
> No, I’ll tell you. The fact is I’m free—since the divorce I’ve had my own apartment near the hospital and no one snoops. There’s a big TV, a couch with stains all over it, and a picture window looking out on the Charles river. But I get so goddamn depressed.
> 
> I talked to my girls on the phone earlier. They barely want to see me anymore, I’m sure because Louise has poisoned the well. The noticeable change in Becky’s voice (she’s the younger one) when she said she had to go: _All right, goodbye now and have a fine day._ She’s nine, what does she have to do that’s so important she can’t talk to me? It was like I was a stranger. These kids are growing up—maybe you wouldn’t understand how fast it goes, not having had kids, but you do have some grasp of biology so maybe you would. Next week I’ll turn around and they’ll both be married and living hundreds of miles away from me behind gates.
> 
> Work isn’t too dull. They let me take it easy—two surgeries a day is the norm, sometimes three, since I do the big ones in cardiac and pulmonary. I have my office and my nameplate and people go “Hello, Doctor” in a way that suggests they aren’t miserable to see me… the practice is what keeps me going most of the time. I don’t like taking days off.
> 
> I can’t sleep at night—it’s three A.M., for instance, now as I’m writing this—and I eat here and there only when I have to. I thought of seeing a psychiatrist at MGH but everyone gossips. This is a dark time, and I hope I can make it to the other side. And I hope there is another side. I think of what you told me once, that night I packed my stuff and tried to run away: it might not feel temporary, but it’s temporary. Prying eyes be damned, you held me until I fell asleep and then, presto, the sun came up. I have no doubt that you saved my life then; you’re still doing it.
> 
> Yesterday I came home loaded and took the bottle of aspirin out of my medicine cabinet. I unscrewed the lid and looked inside. There wasn’t enough in there to kill me, or I would have given it a try. Hawk, I’m calling upon you to remind me I can be happy and I hope it works. I want to stop feeling this way.
> 
> On the plus side, I might still seek revenge on the government or on God, for taking you.
> 
> Trap

* * *


	3. Grief in Reverse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final letter in the series of unsent missives from Trapper to Hawkeye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is about the size of it! Thanks to flootzavut and to those who have read/are reading this li'l batch of angst. Trapper is a babe and I hope you find him lovable here. I did.

 

 

> Dear Hawkeye,
> 
>  
> 
> I can hardly believe I’m sitting down to write this. I don’t exaggerate to say I’m beside myself with happiness.
> 
> So, get comfortable because this is kind of a complicated story. What am I talking about, you might even know it by now. But I want you to hear my version.
> 
> I’m enclosing the letter I sent you when I got back from Korea. The bastards returned it to me saying you’d been killed, and I’m attaching the notice I got too. (Sorry to be so morbid, I hope you’ve gotten better at staring death in the face.) I understand that I wasn’t the only victim of this confusion, and along with your father, I can’t believe this amazing reversal of fortune. I wonder how many more are out there who are rejoicing at having you returned to us. Not only alive, but home.
> 
> Without the help of one of your friends, I might never have found out. There’s a surgeon here named Charles Winchester who’s been with us for a few months. I hadn’t spoken with him much, because I don’t like him and so I try to give him a wide berth. He snickers at my technique in a way that suggests I stitch footballs for a living, rolling his eyes—I know he’s your friend but I’m telling you, it’s rude. Anyway, Dr. Winchester comes into my office today with this dumbfounded look on his face. He asks if he might prevail upon me for a moment, being actually polite and deferential for once, and then he says, “Would I be correct in assuming that Dr. John McIntyre is Trapper John McIntyre? Of the 4077th MASH?” Oh, the smugness when he saw my reaction.
> 
> He put two and two together after working right under my nose (sometimes literally, in doing evaluations of me, I’m sorry to say) since January! I was so happy I bought him a snifter of port at quitting time and we talked all about you. The way you brought him down when he was taking too many amphetamines for stress—that’s Hawk all over, I said. He told me news of everyone else I remember, those that were there at the same time as him, that is: Margaret, Klinger, Radar, the good Father, and that cute nurse Kellye who I recall had a thing for you. I feel like Christmas came early and times ten.
> 
> I want to impress upon you how bleak things were for me for a while there, after I thought I had lost you. Sorry if I’m being too forward by saying so. We were friends a long time—at least in my own life it counted as long—and it was a stunning blow. Now to have you back… boy.
> 
> The fact that Charles (I am now allowed to call him by his Christian name) knew who I was is a big deal for me. It means you talked about me to him. You remembered me after I left, and from the respect the man suddenly showed me, I know you must have represented me as a good surgeon and a good friend. This is hard for me to tell you, but I have had trouble believing the second part. ~~I want you to forgive me.~~ I want that friendship to continue now. There was so much about us that I found special--not in the sense of "unusual," but in the sense of "irreplaceable." Writing that, I know you feel the same way, or at least, you did at the time. Let's just say I'm smelling the tangy bouquet of old socks piled beside the stove right now, and hearing rain on the canvas.
> 
> So, who is BJ? It sounds to me like this guy took over from me as soon as I left the Swamp, by which I mean in more ways than one, if ya know what I mean. Because you and he were thick as thieves, correct? Part of me wants to believe he had missing teeth and a pot belly, but of course you’ve got good taste, kiddo. You might not want me to talk about stuff like this with you, and don’t worry, I respect that. But I figured I’d ask.
> 
> I would be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous at all. For me there hasn’t been anyone else. Girls, yes. I’ve been seeing a girl recently who’s beautiful and really smart. (I guess I forgot to say that I’m divorced now. I’ve been writing to you in my head, and keep forgetting you don’t actually know any of it.) But nothing like what we did or had. Is he better than me? Really, it’s OK if he is.
> 
> Reading this over I think I have to scrap it and start again. Bye bye, tearing the whole thing up. I’ll write you a different one that’s less of an outpouring.
> 
> No, screw it, I’ll keep it for posterity. I’m dead now so go to town, biographer!
> 
> All the best,  
>  John F.X. McIntyre M.D. and a few other suffixes.
> 
> Love you, buddy.

* * *


End file.
